Meg Whitman to Step Down as HPE CEO

If I remember correctly she said at her last HPE earnings call, "I am not going anywhere". She also stated she had much more work to do at HPE.

Now that was in response to Uber's courtship but this was so sudden you have to wonder what prompted it?

It's really not all that sudden. HPE appointed Neri as president back in June. From https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/hpe-appoints-first-... :

The move positions Neri to become HPE’s next CEO, CRN reports.

“This clearly lines up Neri to be the next in line to take the reins of HPE, there is no question about it,” Bob Venero, CEO Future Tech told CRN. “This looks like it is Whitman staying true to her statement that the next CEO of HPE would be born and bred in the HPE family.”

Perhaps CEOs lie to both investors and their employees.

Kind of. The manager in my team (hpe) hasn't been replaced for a few months after quitting, then the project was killed / people let go. Meanwhile, all the communication from the top was pretty much "this is an important project for us". And that's one of the reasons I'm unlikely to work in a big corp in the future.

HPE completed the divestiture of their software business to Micro Focus in September. This is the first earnings call since that completed.

This also happens in startups and scaleups.

I've always been curious how those sorts of internal conversations go at that level at companies that size. Anyone have any insights to share?

Majority of the time when CEOs of major companies leave, it is because they have been asked by the board of directors to leave. This is especially true after unfavorable business/stock performance.

Since the HPE stock split, the HPE stock has lagged the Nasdaq composite index by almost 60%!

Never trust the official communications, in fact you should treat them counter factually. More important, you need to be in some circle of know for highly political companies.

Why counter factually? I agree that they can be largely ignored and it's the actions that should be observed. But if things go well, some good chart will be presented, if not, some other good chart will be presented. What's the reason to go the opposite way?

He probably left because he learned that the project was going to be killed. Sad he didn't share that news with the rest of the team so you could all be hunting for a job while on the corporate payroll just like he did.

If the higher ups feel the need to communicate how important X is to the company, it is usually because X is on shaky ground. If you knew nothing about X before, you know that about it now. If you think about the reasons behind why the message was communicated, rather than the message itself, you can get a lot more real knowledge out of it.

This should be a key point to surviving in the corporate world. Whenever the CEO or VP of engineering spoke, I always paid attention to what was glossed over or conveniently omitted from the official line. While I found it all somewhat distasteful and duplicitous, it's the game. As such, I occasionally found it entertaining to discern what was really being communicated to me. Most other people take these kinds of official communication at face value. Never turn off your brain at work.

I know someone who was in a similar situation recently. The whole thing becomes catch-22. The manager shared his insights but was brushed off as sour grapes and biased against the company.

That said if it had caused some panic at the office the upper management might want to take steps against the said manager. So it's better not to say anything.

It could just as easily be that he was the lead cheerleader for the project and when he left there was nobody there to advocate for it, so it was first to go.

Read Jack Welch's autobiography, very informative on the subject of internal car and successions

You are better off not paying attention at all.

And what specific benefits did you get from this? What actionable insights did you get that your colleagues missed out on?

I've known quite a few monday morning quarterbacks/sophomore kremlinologists/cynics who would regale anyone who'd listen with their analysis of what management is really doing and (especially) what they obviously should have done. What is less clear is how this deep insight ever led to any actionable intelligence at all.

Those who don't pay attention are the ones who get below average reviews and raises and then wonder why it happened.

You absolutely need to pay attention to what is being said at all of your levels of management and figure out how to not only do your job well, but also to do so in a way that supports management.

I was working at an ISV trying to get a new product production ready. It was horrible, a monolithic opaque system that didn't work properly and had been languishing in development hell for almost a decade. Management refused to consider alternative proposals, insisted on doubling down on this system and 'bet the company' on it. When I realised they were really serious, I left.

Their first major sale of the new system to a client fell through 6 months later because the system wasn't ready (would probably never have been ready) and 3 months after that they were bought out and the project cancelled by the new owners. For those I left behind it was utter hell.

So this is a counter-example in a way. Rather than their commitment being unconvincing, it really was convincing. Still they were on a direct course to screwing up and I got out at just the right time.

It wasn't needed. When the manager is gone and a replacement is not hired, it's pretty obvious you should start sending out CVs. Or prepare but stick around for the redundancy pay ;-)

it's not always actionable, but the insight gained by actively analyzing/questioning/doubting the messaging from upper management is useful for a. keeping one's sanity, b. scheduling an exit, c. meaningful discussion, d. identifying opportunities within the organization, and e. entertainment value (stories to share with SO).

> somewhat distasteful and duplicitous

Somewhat? Manipulating your employees using lies and misdirection and then firing them should not be considered ethically acceptable.

I've always been curious about this as well so thanks for the suggestion.

It may not be actionable at all. Executives are where they are for a good reason: they are (usually) good communicators, effective at presenting a hopeful future even if the present sucks. The only thing employees can do is to decide if its worth working for them, as usually they don't have much control over the direction of the company.

I don't know, it goes both ways. I don't tell my manager what I really think and i've seen them be shocked by sudden exits from employees (leaving them in big trouble).